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Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

paulgraham.com

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Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#491

Post by brianchu »

edw519 wrote: post #41

...and while you can train people to be competent, you can't train them to be exceptional. Why not? Every exceptional programmer I've ever met was unexceptional at one time. Something happened for them to become exceptional. I personally believe that while that "something" is most often "doing", "training" is often a big part of the equation. And that training is more often than not training their beliefs as much as…

The kind of training necessary for becoming exceptional is entirely possible, but not scaleable, thus it's not a practical solution to the problem. I think the example you give supports that - mentorship tends to evolve organically from companies you work at, the colleagues you work with, etc. It'd be difficult to imagine good mentorship being assigned, and succeeding, at-scale.

Even the processes for training competent engineers are only barely scaleable. Most competent engineers are still being trained through colleges. Even newly emerging forms of training don't scale that well - take coding bootcamps with limited class sizes and the low success rate of things like Codecademy.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#492

Post by ubernostrum »

dang wrote: post #456
pastProlog wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. From the essay: "But it is dishonest of the anti-immigration people to claim that companies like Google and Facebook are driven by the same motives". "Dishonest", "anti-immigration people", if that's how the "principle of charity" starts off, where do we go from there?

> if that's how the "principle of charity" starts off, where do we go from there? Assuming your premise is correct, it's easy to see where the principle of charity would have us go from there: by responding to the strongest interpretation of what that sentence might mean. Its substantive point is clearly something about how companies like Facebook and Google have different interests than H1B body shops do.

The principle of charity is inapplicable to an article which begins with a "So, have you stopped beating your wife" type of assertion -- as written, it excludes the possibility that a reasonable disagreeing position could exist, since only "anti-immigrant" and "dishonest" people would hold disagreeing positions.

Thus, it is undeserving of charity and undeserving of HN. Do the moderator's duty and get it out of here.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#493

Post by thomasfoster96 »

It's a bit disappointing that immigration descends to bring a shouting match over who's more patriotic far too often.

Paul Graham's essay is actually pretty good - it tells gets that we're ending up in a world where the skilled workforce is not heavily biased towards stable, highly developed countries. Rather, countries like India, China, etc now have a skilled work force probably out numbering the long-time developed countries.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#494

Post by UK-AL »

davidw wrote: post #407
aortega wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but can you think of an example about how a software developer would benefit for being a commodity worker?

Do you really see that as a risk? If it happens, do you think it's realistic that it would happen in some countries but not others?

Its already happened in my country. Web developers are hired on minimum wage.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#495

Post by hackerboos »

eaurouge wrote: post #354
xiaoma wrote: post #10

> The US has less than 5% of the world's population. Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of great programmers are born outside the US. This assumption is repeated throughout the essay, but I'm not particularly convinced it's true. Why would the qualities be evenly distributed between first world countries such as the US where programming is respected and well…

Nigeria is a failed state? When did this happen? Perhaps, you could just explain why you've deemed it a failed state.

Nigeria is pretty stable considering it's neighbours. Sure they have problems in the north but I wouldn't got as far as to call it a failed state.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#496

Post by curun1r »

prostoalex wrote: post #433
curun1r wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers and I did a search for my company at your link. I can't speak for other employers, but it appears that salaries for H1-Bs are ~25% lower than what I know Americans to be making at those same job titles. Half is almost certainly an exaggeration, but to deny that there's an H1-B discount is equally disingenuous. On the topic of the essay, I worry that Paul…

> I'm a dev manager at a prominent employer of software engineers I find it hard to believe. In large companies HR establishes salary levels (usually bands) which are tied to titles or levels within the career ladder. Does your company negotiate each compensation package on a one-off basis?

We have bands, but they can be pretty wide...the top of the band is easily 125% of the bottom. And managers are only limited by the top of the band when extending an offer.

And some of the salaries listed on that site are below band. We also get salaries below band through acquisitions. In those cases, managers aren't really given leeway to get their salaries up to market. We've go a mostly-fixed pool of raises to apportion across our teams. Every year, that's set by executives depending on the company's performance...this past year it was ~4%. Low-level managers can recommend higher for their team, but they need good justification and, at the level of the business unit, raises cannot exceed that value.

Based on what I've seen when extending offers, whereas US citizens sometimes push back on salary or equity, H1-Bs only push back on the INS stuff (they all want EB2s). My guess is a lot of managers will low-ball their offers when they know they can give the candidate an EB2. The more you do this, the more you can increase your headcount or hire more senior developers.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#497

Post by amerliore »

jonny_eh wrote: post #466
njloof wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring H-1Bs can drive all salaries down, including US programmers working at the same desk. I'd also like to see data regarding programmer age -- do we seek young US and H-1B alike to get cheaper, younger talent?

As an H1-B I can say that I'm paid the local market salary for my skillset. And so is my wife.

When supply goes up price goes down. Logic 101 says that H1-B immigrants lower "the local market salary".

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#498

Post by dang »

blackbagboys wrote: post #469
dang wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many opportunities to apply the Principle of Charity here. For example, that statement about populations can easily be interpreted to mean simply that great programmers can be born anywhere. That's pretty unobjectionable. (Imagine the kerfuffle if he had claimed anything but that.) And does the literal number "95%" substantively change the argument that there are many great programmers outside the U.S. and…

The interpretations you've suggested go far beyond interpreting PG's argument in the strongest possible terms, running instead to interpreting it as a completely different argument. (Although I suppose that's not very charitable of me). Obviously anything is unobjectionable if you agree beforehand to disregard any interpretation you could possibly find objectionable.

The interpretations I've suggested are simply the ones that occurred to me as I read the essay.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#499

Post by UK-AL »

oldspiceman wrote: post #23
xiaoma wrote: post #17

> So they claim it's because they want to drive down salaries. But if you talk to startups, you find practically every one over a certain size has gone through legal contortions to get programmers into the the US, where they then paid them the same as they'd have paid an American. Why would they go to extra trouble to get programmers for the same price? The only explanation is that they're telling the truth: there ar…

Which is interesting because there is such an oversupply of lawyers in the states.

Because wages are partly set by cultural expectations rather than pure supply demand.

Re: Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In

#500

Post by jedberg »

anemitz wrote: post #471
tolmasky wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since their negotiating position is somewhat compromised by them needing another employer to transfer this visa to (possible, but very stressful). There is also likely a sense of indebtedness to a company when someone is first sponsored. This is part of the point: this aspect of immigration labor would ironically disappear if it was easier to get into this country. The fact that its hard to get in and get a job is…

So how do we implement this as policy? What we can't do is just say anyone can immigrate. We need to find ways to make it easy for exceptional people to live and work here but make it difficult (sliding scale to impossible) for everyone else. One random idea I was thinking about was regional, industry specific visa committees that would review each application to ensure that we are able to more accurately identify ex…

Allow anyone to immigrate, require they be paid an equal wage as a citizen of similar skill (hard to enforce I know), and then charge the employer a tax on the wage (10%?). This would force employers in any industry to only take people who are at least 10% more valuable to the company. You can change the tax appropriately to get the desired result.
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